Why freshmen quarterbacks are taking over college football

Texas quarterback Shane Buechele throws a pass during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Notre Dame, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2016, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Photo: Eric Gay, Associated Press

The practice of waiting for a college quarterback to develop is quickly going extinct, an antiquated custom akin to the wishbone offense and recruits who aren't on Snapchat. Top quarterbacks show up in the fall of their freshman season, or even the spring before, already equipped with enough know-how to saunter into the starting huddle. The position that supposedly takes longest to master has been overrun by collegiate neophytes.

In 2012 and 2013, Johnny Manziel and Jameis Winston won Heisman Trophies as redshirt freshmen. Last year, Josh Rosen at UCLA and Lamar Jackson at Louisville manned the position in their first year on campus. In the first weekend of this season, freshmen held the reins of heavyweight programs no less distinguished than Alabama, Texas, Florida State and Georgia, with all but the Seminoles opting for a true freshman.

Last weekend, FSU redshirt freshman Deondre Francois surpassed 400 yards in a comeback over Ole Miss. Jalen Hurts shredded Southern California with his arm and legs as Alabama romped. Jacob Eason replaced a senior and stewarded Georgia to a second-half comeback over North Carolina. Shane Buechele split time but still managed to pass for 280 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Longhorns over Notre Dame, perhaps the program's biggest win under Charlie Strong.

This week's freshman quarterback stars may simply be a particularly advanced crop, likely to leave an imprint on this college football season and a couple more to come, with nothing broader to discern. "I think it's really individual," Wisconsin coach Paul Chyrst said. "I think each one is a specific case."

They may also serve as an indication of how quarterback play and the Football Industrial Complex have converged. At the high school level and below, for those kids who want to make it one, quarterback has become a year-round pursuit. They can play in 7-on-7 leagues, hire personalized coaches and attend a series of camps and clinics. "It's its own business," Chryst said.

Technology has led to more efficient and more advanced study. IMG Academy has a sponsorship deal with Striver, a virtual reality system. High schools can buy a similar system, with fewer bells and whistles, at Wal-Mart.

Before they leave high school, quarterbacks often take their advanced training and apply it against better competition than what's available in their immediate area. Intersectional games between top teams from Florida, Texas, Ohio, California and other hotbeds have grown common, sometimes played on national television.

"Things are changing," said Rich Bartel, the quarterbacks coach at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, and a former NFL quarterback. "Teams are playing national schedules. People are starting to branch out. Kids are getting what I would consider a fast rush or seeing skilled coverages more and more before they get to college."

Jim Mora Jr., who coaches Rosen at UCLA, said top freshmen now come with "recognition of defense and understanding of offensive pass concepts" and an "understanding this concept should have an advantage over this defensive call in this area of the field." The rhythm of their footwork and timing of their throws, once a product of collegiate drill work, is present from the start.

Broadcasters and analysts have rightfully been quick to praise the poise of young passers. But when the quarterbacks have specially trained to play the position for years, it's only natural for them to build immunity to panic, 18 years old or not. "When you add those things together, you get a more poised player at a younger age," Mora said. "They're able to handle the environment so much better."

Earlier this week, Southern California coach Clay Helton reminisced with Trojans quarterbacks coach Tee Martin about their own college recruitment a generation ago. They received their first scholarship offers in the fall of their high school senior years and still wound up, respectively, at powerhouses Auburn and Tennessee.

They laughed at the memory, because now top programs offer top quarterbacks as sophomores, if not earlier, because they start training at a young enough age to display evident collegiate ability by then. Helton received a firsthand example when he watched redshirt freshman Sam Darnold compete this summer.

"The kid was so far beyond his age maturity-wise," Helton said. "I think there is a faster development than there was in the past."

The hastened maturity has teamed with a paradoxical partner, and it helps explain both the proliferation of star freshmen and why their from-childhood training doesn't translate in the NFL: As the quarterbacks grow more advanced, college offenses have grown simpler.

"There's probably more a disparity from scheme from college to the NFL," Bartel said. "The college system resembles more the high school system. When you see guys like Shane Buechele go in and have success early, it's probably not too far off of his high school system."

In some spread systems, such as the Air Raid, play calls can be distilled into one word. NFL offenses, almost all of them some version of the West Coast or Erhardt-Perkins, use complex verbiage and elaborate, long-winded play calls.

For a college quarterback in the spread, passing progressions typically involve nothing more than, "Is he open?" In the NFL, the kinds of reads a quarterback must make are varied, based off of layers of the field and the geometry of the defense. Almost every college offense now operates predominantly from the shotgun, giving quarterbacks a less convoluted vantage.

"The game has become a shotgun game," said Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez, whose teams at West Virginia helped popularize playing from the shotgun. "The young guys are learning in the shotgun, and in the shotgun they can see the field better and get rid of the ball quicker."

For 10 weeks last spring, Bartel worked with former TCU quarterback Trevone Boykin as he prepared for the NFL Draft. Boykin possessed the physical skills for the NFL and "had a high football IQ relative to what he knew," Bartel said. But in the Air Raid at TCU, Boykin never had to make a read other than whether his first or second option was immediately open. The majority of their time together was spent teaching Boykin how to handle an NFL playbook. (Boykin went undrafted, but he signed with the Seahawks, made the roster after a strong summer and will enter the season as Russell Wilson's primary backup.)

"What you can do is get him cognitively ready for the kind of workload, being able to say those plays and comprehend what you're saying, making a word picture in your head," Bartel said. "It's getting their concepts, so you can get a vision of what a play is going to look like."

In college, coaches have little incentive to teach complex schemes. Professional defenses can stifle the simplified offenses, but college defensive players lack the sophistication - when everyone has less experience, offensive players who have to think less gain the advantage.

Helton, whose Trojans were crushed by the Crimson Tide, credited Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin with keeping his plan simple for Hurts, often putting him in position to read just half the field, with only one or two receiving options to choose from.

Bartel estimated a dozen schools use pro-style systems. At Florida State, Francois played in one of them under Jimbo Fisher. Even he had a head start, though. He played under former Florida State and NFL quarterback Chris Weinke at IMG before Weinke departed to coach quarterbacks for the St. Louis Rams.

Last year, Shea Patterson replaced Francois as IMG's quarterback and became the top-ranked recruit in the country. He chose Ole Miss, where for now he backs up Chad Kelly. Bartel noted the irony that even at IMG, which employs a team of coaches with professional experience, Patterson had played in a spread system. IMG coaches try to prepare quarterbacks for NFL futures, but in order to win, it makes sense to run an explosive, simple offense. "We say we equip them for the now and prepare them for later," Bartel said.

More and more, for college quarterbacks, the now comes faster than ever before.